BENGALURU: Like many people in Kurubarahalli which bore the brunt of torrential rains a few days ago, 65-year-old Jayamma is also trying to thread the pieces of her life together. But unlike others, she cannot have a moment’s rest from the steady stream of visitors coming to her house.
Five days after she saved the lives of seven children and carried them to safety as waters rose everywhere around them, she is exasperated at having to answer the same questions repeatedly.
“Why are people disturbing me this way? I am fed up of answering the same questions over and over again. What I did was just a humane act. Why am I being put in the limelight for this,” she questions.
On October 13, Bengaluru witnessed a heavy downpour and parts of the low-lying Kurubarahalli were left completely inundated. Around Jayamma’s house, water entered the houses and started rising at an alarming rate. As she rushed to the street to escape, she saw seven stranded kids, all aged between one and ten years, with waters reaching above the knees of the tallest one. She immediately started moving out all the children to safety. Just as she finished carrying all the children to high ground, one of the houses where the children were stranded came crashing down.
“If you were in my place, you would also do that,” she claims modestly as she sits in her tiny house and tries to fold the few clothes she was able to salvage after the rain water mixed with sewage damaged or washed away whatever possessions she owned. Scenes from that day are etched deep in her memory. “They are children of daily wage labourers. I too am a daily wage earner. I would do that for any child. That day, I saw dead bodies pass in a stream of water. Quite horrifying it was. I cannot get over it. Those images still send a shiver down my spine,” she says referring to the mother and daughter duo who were washed away in the rain from the same lane.
At 65 years of age, this widow manages to make ends meet by working as a labourer and also renting out a tiny shed to one of the migrant families, whose kids she saved. Her two sons have moved away and have no contact with her. Ailing from diabetes and high blood pressure, she struggles to earn two meals a day and if she is lucky, manages to earn anything from `50 to 80 a day.
Tough as her life is, it has not made her apathetic to the concerns of others. When she visits the temporary shelters where the rescued kids are housed, they run to her in excitement and hug her. Shivamma, mother of three of the kids, knows very well that credit goes to Jayamma for the children being alive. Jayamma showed her humanitarian side earlier too by making sure the children were enrolled in a nearby school, where they have received free bags and uniforms and more importantly get one good meal a day.
“She guided us through all the procedures of admitting them to the school. Today, my kids come back home happy. They get meals and books from school,” Shivamma says.
Her good act might have drawn a lot of admirers to her door, but has not done much for her in terms of help.
“I might not have two meals to eat a day but I will not settle for less for what I ought to have. What am I going to do with your `2,000? Treat us with regard or else I will add `50 to it and hand it back to you,” she loudly rebukes supporters of of MLA K Gopalaiah who are visiting her to hand over the measly compensation amount.
Jayamma has been active in persuading her other neighbours to have their kids admitted to schools as well. An illiterate, Jayamma has an intense desire to see the children do better than be stuck with her own fate. “Do you know that I have to ask someone to even dial a phone number? I have great difficulty in reading bus numbers. I do not want these children going through the same. They should be able to stand on their own feet,” she says determinedly.